Frightfully Enticing, Alarming Roguelike: Darkwood

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Darkwood! It was fright at first sight when I saw the first trailer for your procedurally generated top-down horror shenanigans. There was crafting, barricading of doors, and even surreal and comically unnerving conversations with inanimate objects. The lighting effects created a suitable atmosphere and the darkness was filled with weirdness and tension rather than hordes of slobbering beasties. The game is currently creeping down the Indiegogo route but is more than $10,000 short of its $40,000 goal with only nine days to go-go. New alpha footage may help to win over the doubters.

It’s all well and good dropping some meat in a bear trap and hoping for monsters to put their faces twixt the jaws, but always remember that you too are made of meat and your fighting spirit could be the deadly trap for which your flesh acts as bait. In short, always be prepared to punch a monster square on the chin and if it doesn’t have a chin, aim for the parts most resembling eyes.

I’m going to stop kickstarting games that release more than 4 months from now. I currently am broke, but still got nothing to play.
(Except if they’re reaaally close of failing their crowdfunding campaign. Or it’s from devs I love. Or it looks really amazing.)

I won’t lie and say that roguelike isn’t losing its meaning, but randomized levels and permadeath are big traits of roguelikes so in this case it’s not exactly erroneous to say it is partially a roguelike (or as some call them, roguelike-like).

I made a big mess about this in the comment section of a katchup a little while back. Fully agreed that roguelike is becoming a diluted term and I’d be happy to see roguelike-like catch on despite its clumsiness and twice removed abstraction.

I don’t know why, but this top-down perspective is the least immersive to me. It doesn’t give you a good enough view of your surroundings and it’s hard getting a grip on what stuff is. At the start of the video I thought he was walking up to a stub and then it turned out to be a person he’s talking to.

Anything else about this game seems great to me. Perhaps if there is a demo I could get over my top-down hesitation.

Music early on reminded me of STALKER, and combined with the broken-down T-34 on the promotional image in the title made me so god dam nostalgic that I wanted to give ’em some money.
Then I realised I’m broke.